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Dr. Michael Plotzke is a senior health economist with expertise in the area of Medicare payment policy, the organization of healthcare providers and quality measurement. His work typically involves the analysis of large datasets such as Medicare claims, assessment and enrollment data. Dr. Plotzke serves as principal investigator for multiple projects with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.  On the “Home Health Prospective Payment System and Hospice: Analysis Support and Monitoring” project, Dr. Plotzke leads a team of researchers in analyzing trends in Medicare hospice and home health usage and constructing large-scale payment reform options for both benefits.  Dr. Plotzke also leads the “Evaluation of the Medicare Care Choices Model” project that evaluates a new payment model for end-of-life care that is being tested with 141 hospice providers.  This project involves analysis of existing administrative data and collection of new data through surveys of caregivers, surveys of hospice providers and in-depth case studies of hospice providers participating in the model.

Lauren Dunton is a Principal Associate with almost two decades of experience as a social science researcher evaluating programs and analyzing policies relating to homelessness, housing, workforce, and education across the country. As a seasoned Project Director, Ms. Dunton has led complex research and technical assistance projects for a range of federal agencies, state governments, and national foundation and philanthropic organizations. She has expertise in qualitative and mixed-method data collection and analysis, leading project teams, and authoring reports. 

Meghan Lynch, Sc.D., is an accomplished manager of cross-disciplinary teams, with 20 years of experience specializing in toxicology and human health risk assessment. She is skilled at interpreting, evaluating, and communicating toxicological and epidemiological information for hazardous substances. She has managed a variety of projects for ATSDR, OSHA, EPA, and nonprofit agencies. These include leading tasks requiring the synthesis of toxicological information and risk assessments, and performing both probabilistic and benchmark dose modeling. The results of these projects have been subject to peer review. Lynch has also provided memorandums and analyses supporting risk assessments and addressing industry comments, which have been used to support plaintiffs in litigation for chemical contaminants.

Andrew Alderdice is an experienced health and human services leader with more than 35 years’ experience across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. He is currently Abt Global’s Country Manager for Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Katharine Witgert is a health policy researcher with 20 years of public health and health care policy experience. Witgert manages research and analysis of health system innovations, conducting program evaluations for federal clients, including design, implementation, and reporting of findings. She provides technical assistance to state officials, primarily in the areas of Medicaid reforms and building Medicaid agency partnerships with public health, behavioral health, and social services programs.

Lisanne F. Brown has more than 20 years of experience in public health evaluation and research and a background in epidemiologic and program evaluation methods. She has worked on numerous evaluation and applied research studies for local, state and federal agencies. Her areas of expertise include maternal and child health, health care access, integration of primary care and behavioral health, community-centered health homes, social determinants of health, mixed methods evaluation design and implementation, survey design, and evaluation capacity building.

Nicole Keane, MSN, RN, CPHQ has an extensive clinical and research background in healthcare quality improvement, measure development, team-building and formative evaluation in post-acute and primary care settings. Her focus is providing technical assistance to healthcare systems and clinicians to drive quality improvement through learning and implementing the skills of measure development, implementation, benchmarking, analysis, and report writing.

Dereje Dengela is an epidemiologist and entomologist with more than 25 years of experience in planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of malaria control programs. He has extensive managerial experience, having supervised as many as 94 professionals. He has held senior positions with the government of Ethiopia, worked on projects for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and served as a national malaria program officer in Ethiopia. He supported the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia in mobilization of financial resources from donors, particularly the Global Fund. Dengela has authored or co-authored more than 30 publications in peer-reviewed journals.